"But the dream, the echo, slips from him as quickly as he had found it and as consciousness comes to him (a slap and not the gentle waves of oceanic tides), it dissolves entirely. His muscles relax as the cold claims him again, as the numbness sets in, and when his grey eyes open, there’s nothing but the faint after burn of a dream often trod and never remembered." --Brigade, written by Laura
She does not often stay in the confines of her home.
Even from a young age, she has found such things wonderfully mundane. She prefers to make her way to the common lands, to the other kingdoms, to the places in between. It’s there that she finds the things that lurk in the shadows. The things that coo and curl their finger—that draw her further into the belly of the beast. She finds the corpses and the brittle leaves. The bones and the marrow and the muck.
Today though, her delicate legs take her to the river. To the mud that rises up its sides, the water nearly frigid in the fading autumn. She is a pretty thing, but she has never been overly terse to the dirt and she gladly picks her way down the shore, feeling the way that it sticks to her thin legs, some of it splashing up to her belly. It’s colder than she had thought it would be, but she doesn’t let the discomfort show.
She would need to learn to deal with such things, she knows.
So she continues to make her way to the water, refusing to even shiver.
When she gets there, she lowers her head to drink, feeling the way her throat nearly refuse the water as it first touches her tongue. But she manages to drink and when she pulls back, there is satisfaction in having overcome such the smallest of discomforts. She swallows it down and then pulls back, listening to the gentle roar as the tides carry the water further and further, down to the ocean and beyond.
heard your voice leading me on
through the darkness to the dawn
He wanders because he is all full of restlessness.
An insatiable need to move.
He has met many a soul who blame their wandering on an inherent unhappiness but he has never felt that way. He is spurred across Beqanna by a sort of breathless wonder, a want to swallow the world whole. He wants it all to live in the cage of his chest where he can nurture it and love it and let it shine.
A silly thing to want, certainly. But he is still just a boy, wide-eyed and naive. There has been nothing yet that has fettered his bone-deep joy.
He moves now to the river as a wolf because he has always been more comfortable that way. A shaggy animal with gold-laced fur. And, though he wears wings as an equine, he has no wings as a wolf. He pads right through the mud, reveling in the way it squishes between his individual toes. And he smiles but it looks something more like a snarl, all teeth, in this form.
He goes to the water and he sees her there. A pretty thing that makes his heart pulse sideways (the pretty things always do) and he shifts seamlessly from his canine form back to his equine. Because he is prettier as a horse, he knows.
Not that he should be at all preoccupied with the way he looks.
“Hello,” he calls from the shore and tilts his head. The smile looks less threatening on the horse’s mouth. “Aren’t you cold in there?”
She glances up before she raises her fine head. Looks up from beneath her lashes, her eyes shrewd and sharp, her mouth still wet with the icy water that darkens the tip of her nose. It is obvious, to her at least, that the wolf who comes to the water is not what it seems. Perhaps it is the way that it pads up to the water with no fear of the creature in it and no innate hunger shining from his angled eyes.
And the suspicion is confirmed quickly when he shifts.
This form is even more striking than the wolf before it.
She does not let such praise reach her eyes though. Does not react at all to the way that it smiles and snarls and then studies her from his blue eyes. Finally, she lifts her head, the water dripping down into the water that curls around her thin legs—a promise of some deeper current that does not reach her here.
“Hello,” she says with a simper, with a smile that curls just the edges of her lips but does not quite reach her almond eyes. “I do not mind being cold,” it is not quite the truth, but it is not quite a lie either. There are worst things than being cold, she knows. Worse things than the icy water that bites into her flesh.
She could walk to the shore now, but she doesn’t—not yet.
“Do you mind?” she calls to him, and even she is not certain whether it is a challenge or an invitation.
heard your voice leading me on
through the darkness to the dawn
It does not occur to him that perhaps she had not wanted to be disturbed, that maybe she had been enjoying her solitude before he’d come along and shattered it.
He is a social creature by nature, friendly and extroverted and always keen for conversation, so he often forgets that not everyone is the same as he is. Not everyone is fond of company. And she looks up at him and he realizes too late that there is a good chance his intrusion is not welcomed. It is not lost on him that her smile does not reach her eyes but he does not yet understand the sensation of foreboding as it curls itself into the pit of his gut.
But she returns his greeting rather than shunning him and that helps to temper whatever trepidation he feels. He sinks a little closer and then closer still until his opal hooves have disappeared beneath the surface and the water licks cold at his ankles. The frigid temperature chases a shockwave down the length of his spine, hitches his breath and makes him shudder.
He wonders if it’s magic that makes her impervious to the cold or if it’s something else entirely but he does not ask. He simply studies her a long moment, smiling still. He glances down at the water then, tilts his head, watches the current sweep a flower petal down the long stretch of river.
“I think so,” he answers and does not feel embarrassed at having admitted it, even if his dislike of the cold might be construed as a weakness. He laughs quietly and shakes his head, oblivious to the several flower petals that fall from his mane and chase the first petal along with the current. “I don’t have much experience with it, but I don’t think I like it much at all.”
She takes a cold kind of satisfaction in the way that the cold water shocks him. The way that he shudders when it reaches him, and she cannot help but wonder if he would make the same face once the poison hit his bloodstream. Would his eyes go wide? Would he fight it or would he simply allow it to take him over? There is a dark fascination that grows within her with such thoughts. The need to try and figure out how others would greet death once it knocked upon their doorstep. It tells a girl so much about a stranger.
But she doesn’t pursue these thoughts further.
She just studies him as he remains planted in the water, not coming further. Deciding that she is pleased with the unfolding of events, she steps closer to him, closing the distance between them so that she can get a better look at his eyes. For a second, there’s nothing but the sound of their breathing as she finally holds onto his gaze, her voice only a smidge deeper when she finally does speak once more.
“I think you’d like to come deeper into the water,” there’s the faint buzz of pleasure that she always gets when she feels the enthrallment loosen within her. “Don’t you?” If the discomfort of the frigid temperature reaches into her, she pays it no mind. She has grown up giving herself small doses of things such as this. Cold temperatures. The brush of death. The taste of a poisonous flower.
heard your voice leading me on
through the darkness to the dawn
He is such a simple creature, Lumineer.
He is eager and naive and trusts the dark things because he does not know how to recognize them as dark things.
She stands there in the depths and all he can think that she must be such a powerful thing. He does not think about the price one must pay in order to be so powerful.
She comes closer and her approach kicks his heart into a frenzied pace that hitches his breath and makes his smile falter at its edges. Perhaps if he were a shy thing he might have looked away, hidden his gaze, let heat and color pool in his cheeks as if he were something bashful. But, while he is not particularly bold, he has never known how to shrink, so he just goes on looking.
Something strange splinters through his mind then, as they look each other steadily in the eye. He had felt some primal impulse to abandon the water, to retreat back onto the shore where the cold could not reach him, but it has all but completely dissolved by the time she speaks.
There is something new and enticing in those depths and his smile deepens again as he tilts his fine, striped head and nods. There is something vacant in the boy’s pale blue eyes as he begins to move, sinking into the depths.
“I guess the cold isn’t so bad,” he murmurs, though the frigid temperature spirals through his veins like an electric shock to his system. It arrests the air in his lungs and a sigh shudders past his lips. And still, he cannot look away.
His mind proves to be a malleable thing, and she delights in it. Cannot stop the way that she croons when he willingly steps further into the water, when he places himself beneath her thumb. Her smile widens and there is almost the brush of something innocent in the joy that she feels in that moment. But it is quick-lived and it bleeds from her quickly, too quickly, for her to simply sit and enjoy it for what it is.
Instead, she remains starved, hungry for the next.
So she cases her glance back to the handsome boy wading into the water. Feels something like pity and something like hunger. Something possessive and something vicious. She walks closer to him and presses a kiss to his temple, lips lingering there. “See, it’s not so bad, is it?” She realizes that she doesn’t have his name, which bothers her. “My name is Rosebay,” she offers, the pause heavily implying her expectation.
Twisting around, ignoring the icy ache in her legs, she faces him again, reaching up to brush his golden-laced forelock from his eyes so that she can see him better. So that she can look deep into them, finding that core and locking around it once more. “Do you think that would you drink it until your belly burst should I ask?” she muses, not quite commanding anything, but wondering if he even knew his limits.
heard your voice leading me on
through the darkness to the dawn
It could kill him and he would never know the difference.
His willingness to allow her to take hold of his mind could spell an untimely end and he would go with that same strange, stilted smile on his face.
He has no opportunity to save himself because he is young and impressionable and the mind is still weak as a result. He has no conviction, Lumineer, not yet. If only because he has never encountered a situation where he needed to defend himself. Not like this.
He sinks deeper into the frigid water and it continues to kick the air out of his chest in shuddering sighs. The muscles tremble and spasm, misfiring in response to the cold. The cold, which burrows its way under his skin and into the marrow of his bones. The cold, which makes the mind even hazier.
It’s not so bad, he says and she says it back and it echoes and rattles in his head. It is bad, the logical brain thinks, but he cannot reach this thought through the fog.
Rosebay, she tells him and how long will he have to remember it? “I’m Lumineer,” he murmurs in response. Polite, even under her spell. His mother would be proud.
She looks away and there is a moment of startling clarity where he realizes what he’s done and wants desperately to turn back for the shore. But she reaches for him, touches him, and finds his eye again. And he is too young, too foolish, to look away. Too foolish to know how to save himself.
Would he drink until his belly burst? He had not been thirsty but his tongue feels suddenly dry. Thick and useless.
She is delighted with him and she rejoices in his compliance, his manners, in his handsome face. There is a flare of something possessive in her chest and she decides that she does not yet want to walk him to the slaughter—not yet. She does not want to lose the creature who bends so easily, who smiles so kindly, and she presses a rewarding kiss to his cheek, still so pleased with how he has responded so far.
“What a good answer,” she coos before she begins to feel the cold settle into her bones. It is the longest that she has allowed herself to sit in the icy tide and, even though she has grown increasingly used to the temperature, she is not immune. Unwilling to give up a sense of control, or show her weakness, she turns to walk back toward the shore. “It is unkind to keep a lady so uncomfortable in the cold,” she admonishes as she glances over her shoulder, locking onto his gaze, as though he was the cause of their discomfort.
Clucking her tongue against her teeth, she moves up onto the shore, gritting her teeth against the wind that brushes against her damp coat—knowing that this part was always the worst of it. A muscle jumps in her delicate jaw as she steels herself against the discomfort and she turns to see if he follows her.
“If only I had a way to keep warm,” she muses, searching his gaze, her smile nearly shy and demure. She wonders if this is what it means to poison a mind—to twist it against itself, to plant desires in it that are not its own. She wonders how far her control can stretch. How much she can twist him onto himself with her enthrallment. At a certain point, would she even need it anymore? Would that be possible?
The questions simmer as she watches him, waiting patiently to see how it plays out.
heard your voice leading me on
through the darkness to the dawn
He only barely remembers what answer he’d given. When he tries to reach through his mind to retrieve it, he finds the memory gone. Or, at the very least, buried in mud he can’t seem to dig through.
He feels every bit a child as she kisses his cheek, praised for something he has no memory of. And this troubles him deeply, Lumineer, and he thinks that he should dredge himself out of the depths and return to the warmth and safety of the shore. It feels wrong to be rewarded for doing something he hadn’t meant to do and a bashful heat finally pools in his cheeks, every ounce of heat left in his body gathering in the stretch of flesh that had felt the brush of her lips.
He is such a simple boy, so easily manipulated, and he follows her back to the river’s edge. His own teeth chatter and he longs for the sort of magic that would instantly grant them warmth. Were he not so cold, perhaps his embarrassment would have been enough to heat him from the inside out. (Embarrassment born from her admonishment -- he had not meant to keep her in the water so long and, indeed, has no memory of inviting her into the current).
She need not use magic to spur him promptly into action and he sidles up beside her, stretching a wing across her back and using it to hold her close. The most he can offer her is the slowly regenerating heat of his body. His teeth continue to chatter as he exhales a shaky breath.
“That wasn’t very smart of us,” he murmurs and then fashions up a smile that struggles to stick to his trembling mouth.
